President Donald Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion unless it retracts a 2024 documentary, alleging “reputational and financial harm.” The move follows two of the British broadcaster’s top executives resigning over the controversial editing of a 2021 speech in the broadcast.
Trump attorney Alejandro Brito sent a letter to the BBC on Sunday threatening legal action over a BBC Panaroma documentary focused on Trump ahead of the 2024 election. The BBC said on Sunday its director general, Tim Davie, and its head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, would leave the broadcaster after a leaked internal memo found the broadcaster “completely misled” viewers with an edited clip that suggested Trump encouraged supporters outside the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021 to riot at the Capitol over the 2020 election results. (Trump had urged his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”)
Brito demanded the British broadcaster retract the broadcast, issue an apology and “appropriately compensate” Trump for such alleged harm by 5 p.m. ET on Friday.
“Due to their salacious nature, the fabricated statements that were aired by the BBC have been widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums, which have reached tens of millions of people worldwide,” Brito wrote in the letter, which was obtained by TheWrap. “Consequently, the BBC has caused President Trump to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
The BBC first reported the legal demand on Monday. A BBC spokesperson said the broadcaster “will review the letter and respond directly in due course.”
“The BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally and deceitfully editing its documentary in order to try and interfere in the Presidential Election,” a spokesman for Trump’s legal team told TheWrap. “President Trump will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in lies, deception, and fake news.”
The leaked internal memo, written by a former BBC adviser and first reported by the Telegraph, ignited an initial wave of fury last week that culminated in Sunday’s executive exits. Davie said “there have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility,” while Turness said the episode “has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC — an institution that I love.”
BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized Monday for the “error in judgment” over the documentary in an interview, saying he did not want Davie to resign.
“We were upset by the decision,” Shah said.
Trump touted the resignations in a Truth Social post on Sunday, thanking the Telegraph for “exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’”
“These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election,” he wrote. “On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also commended the exits in an X post, saying BBC News was “dying because they are anti-Trump Fake News” while urging “everyone” to watch its unabashedly conservative competitor GB News. Leavitt had told the Telegraph the edited clip was “purposefully dishonest” and derided the BBC as a network airing “blatant propaganda and lies about the president.”
The BBC resignations, and possible looming legal threat, only add to the ominous climate for news organizations grappling with a litigious president. Both ABC News parent Disney and CBS News owner Paramount opted to settle with Trump for $16 million rather than vigorously defending themselves in court. Trump has also sued the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, both of which have pushed back.
Guardian columnist Jane Martinson suggested the BBC should have defended itself sooner amid conservative outrage over the Telegraph report. “The row obscures the context that explains what is, at the heart of the matter, a political campaign against the BBC that could act as a textbook example of how to confuse and undermine the kind of journalism that is, at the very least, aiming for impartiality in a sea of spin and distortion,” she wrote.
Ed Davey, the leader of the U.K.’s Liberal Democrat party, also said Trump’s comments marked an ominous precursor to further escalation.
“To see Trump’s White House claiming credit for his downfall and attacking the BBC should worry us all,” he wrote on X.
Shah, in his interview on Monday, would not explicitly say how the BBC would respond to Trump after calls for a network apology.
“We have received communication from President Trump by his people and we are considering how to reply to him,” he said.
